What do you strive to achieve in your life?

Tags

Bear Mountain, Cold Spring, Living in wilderness, Private Jets, Silicon Valley, Success

Bear Mountain, NY

Last few days I was up at the Bear Mountain area in NY. Driving along these peaceful roads of Cold Spring area I started thinking about the life of simplicity.

I wonder how can one live here? What do these people do for living? What is their income source? I have been wondering about these questions since then.

It’s rather easy to jump to the conclusion that all of these folks are Silicon Valley or Wall Street tycoons. But that is not the case. These are not just the elites with private jets and speedboats: there are plenty of common folks around here too.

So that brings an interesting paradox. If we have a desire to live in these areas then it is not just about making tons of money. There are alternative ways to live there too. What are those alternatives? Which one should we choose?

Don’t you dare think that I am suggesting a lazy lifestyle; au contraire I am proposing a life of enrichment, of fun and peace – but without wasted efforts. The issue is how much do I need which will enable living a life like that? Or is there more to these than just two ways of living.

May be folks with private jets are having these paradises as one flavor of fun. Their wealth can often enable choices, but the effort curve is quite steep and risky. While the rest of the folks are limited in their choices but their lives are already enriched.

What is the path to live in places like these?

Trends in Free-to-Play (F2P) games

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F2P Games Trends, Facebook, Social Games Trends

Have you ever wondered what is the future of Free-to-Play games. I have researched this question in depth in relationship to some work I was doing. Although these ideas are pretty crude but I thought to seek your feedback through this post. So here you.

Democratization of Games: With growing casual, social, mobile and hard-core games everyone can have fun. It’s a trend that will continue and we need to look at audiences that have different needs and expectations from the same game. Your game can take advantage of iPhone and iPad. Explore features like portability, location, always-on and connectivity in case of iPhone. Stunning graphics, family-device, and lying down on the couch ability can be explored on iPad.
Casual/Social Players as viable markets: Casual/Social markets have started showing growth and revenue. Games will grow on to new geographic locations, as well to new social platforms. Your game can cater to contexts wherein players enjoy a one game across their all iOS devices and browser. We sort of cross promote each platform.
International Platforms: Internationally we just started the platforms, and this trend will grow, look at FaceBook, Renren, Orkut, etc. Your game can work on these platforms, or even think of collaborating with these. International content will be a great opportunity. Imagine celebrating a Malian goddess day around the Restaurant City with some special content, and consumables.
Payments are OK: Users have started accepting of payments within games (as well of course there is a growing expectation of FREE). You can take advantage of multiple payment options within Apple Empire, and experiment with global options available.
Location Awareness: This is a great trend, especially propelled by iOS devices and other smart devices. There are possibilities of new game play. Let us say you have a restaurant related game. Then you can design a feature where we visit a restaurant in real world and earn points in your game (of course we have a revenue share type arrangement with the restaurants too.)

What does it take to start a design firm like IDEO?

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David Kelley, Design, Firms, IDEO, Success, Tom Kelley

What does it take to start a design firm like IDEO? This was a question at Quora. There are some really interesting answers there, here is my take:

The secret is simple: you need both David Kelley and Tom Kelley to make a firm like IDEO.

A lot of design consultancies are divorced from the realities of business. A lot of business consultancies don’t understand the value of good design. IDEO seems to be maintaining a good balance.

To solve a problem at current level of sophistication in the business world the companies need business savvy with an excellent user experience: IDEO provides that.

That is IDEO’s such a visible quality that it is almost invisible to most.

The game design challenge

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Design Challenge, Eric Zimmerman, Game Design, Game Mechanics, GDC 2011, Religion

This year the Game Developer’s Conference at San Francisco had a very interesting session. Three top designers were asked to design a game that uses the same “game mechanics” as organized religions.

While looking at this video, I had a moment. I have been thinking about this for as long as I can remember: how does religions propagate, what do they offer and why do they succeed? I never thought of all these as game mechanics. Come to think of it, religions use excellent game mechanics.

Here is the video, enjoy. Thanks to the the excellent folks at Gamespot.

Game Design, two interesting videos

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Game Design, Game for Good, Game Layer, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Synthetic Worlds, Worlds

I came across two interesting TED talks about games. Worth watching.

The game layer on top of world

This one is by Seth Priebatsch.
Here is the quick snippet from TED’s site.

By now, we’re used to letting Facebook and Twitter capture our social lives on the web — building a “social layer” on top of the real world. At TEDxBoston, Seth Priebatsch looks at the next layer in progress: the “game layer,” a pervasive net of behavior-steering game dynamics that will reshape education and commerce.

Games for a better world.

The second one is from Jane McGonigal.
Here is a quick snippet from the TED’s website.

Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.

bonus

Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man
And a bonus…totally relevant….Rory Sutherland is hilarious in this talk. Here is quick snippet from TED.

……makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value — and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life.

To an audience of one: I’ll be back

Tags

Ash Muraya, Joe Chin, Lean, Lean Product Management, Serial Entrepreneur, Startup, Steve Blank

I have been rather busy lately, so blog is on hiatus. That should not be confused with the silence of the mind or that of the world around me. Quite contrary.
There are a lot of things to talk about. From new blogs I read, to books, to new places, events, people, and experiences.
Plus new year’s resolutions…
A lot to catch up.
Lately I have been a regular reader of Steve Blank and Ash Muraya. Joe Chin one day became a source of a conversation that lead to talks about Steve.

re(searcher) that I am…now I am lead on to or hooked on to Steve, Ash, and a few others..
Started reading Steve’s blog from blogs first post to till April 2010. I still have to cover couple of months, but the journey so far has given a lot of insights, moments of ahas and inspirations. It essentially proves a resounding point that despite being a specialization focused world we live in, it is possible and enriching to have multiple flavours of our lives.

So the new plan of this blog is just that: Flavours
Acknowledge the multiple lives we live, sometime by design, and others by chance. We do have flavours and flavours do make us unique.

Steve showed his life, its flavours, its ups and downs, and that is what I would like to emulate here.

To an audience of one…this is a promise: I shall come back.

Apprentice to (ad)venture

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Apprenticeship, Storytelling, The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital, Venture Capital

Robert Finkel in his book  The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital  has captured the essence of successful venture capital and private equity masters. Though in the beginning I thought the word “masters” in the title of the book a bit cheesy but as I knew more about venture capital I am convinced that it’s a right choice.

The challenge with entrepreneurship, investments, or any activity that involves interactions with humans is that its not a precise science. You are judging and betting on people and their dreams, their intentions, and their ability to get things done. Its a tricky business, and a great candidate for apprenticeship model.

Although each PE(Private Equity) or VC(Venture Capital) has some similar sets of financial tools, they all have unique personalities, observations, and capacities. So you got to listen to their stories in their own words. You got to find out what they were thinking when they did those pioneering deals. In that regard the book does a wonderful job. You can hear the voice of each “master” very clearly. 

Venture Capital is just like Parenting

Tags

Innovation, Parenting, Venture Capital

While reading the stories of the pioneers of the VC industry one thought kept bugging me: skills required to be a good VC are same as parenting.

Lately I have been researching about the Venture Capital industry. I just finished reading The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital by Robert Finkel. This book is a must read for anyone interested in venture capital, private equity or business.

Stories of these pioneers resemble the stories of proud parents. Any how here are some of my observations.

some similarities

1. Paradox of control and freedom
2. Advice with Resources
3. Success is mutual
4. I believe in your dream

some differences

1. There is no free lunch
2. Do your chores or go out
3. It’s not forever

Any thing else that you can think of?

Let the future be your guide

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Executives, Future, Planning, Plausible Future, Possible Future, Wild Cards

One of the challenge of the conventional business planning is total reliance on past data. A typical business planning session will look at the past performance, and then project that on to the future. Simple right? Not really.

In this way of planning there is a deep assumption that the future will be just like past, just a little bigger. There are number of revisions that go through these projections. In most of the smart teams and organizations the customer facing members normally request the sanity changes. So the projections are revised; with the different growth factor but essential assumption of the behavior of the market stays put.

People have tried bottom up planning, where the customer-facing people give their estimates of potential growth. The estimates of each member are summed up to form projections for teams, regions, and product and customer groups. Though a bit accurate than top-down planning the bottom-up method still does not explicitly encounter the fundamental assumption: the future will remain like past.

Imagine if we had asked the horse and buggy sales manager to project the performance of his company in next 20 years. Probably he would have predicted the shortage of horses or some massive market for thorough bred horses. He would have never projected cars.
If executives plan future with their “intention” set on past; their plans will be tinted by the color of what happened in the past. They wont be able to imagine the future with all honesty, totality and naivety of an impartial observer.

What can we do then?

First step is to accept that future is not one but rather a set of multiple possibilities.

Futures Cone

Second, an exercise should be conducted, where a desired future is first imagined. Next necessary building milestones are imagined and connected with the developments of today.

Third, start working on the world of today with an eye on future state.

Knowledge without application: Mental Gas

Tags

Action, Confused, Knowledge without action, Love of Knowing, Need of Knowing

While reading a book yesterday I started wondering, “Why am I reading this book?” What are my reasons for this effort? Immediately a voice inside me said, “for knowledge.”
Is’nt that the answer to everything we do? What a blanket excuse.
If you pay attention and start thinking of why you read different books in the past, then you will immediately know that “for knowledge” is not the only reason. We read for fun, for practice, and for knowledge.

Reading books for knowledge is such a broad category and is similar to eating grass and claiming it’s for energy. It is not the most optimal way to get energy, but no one can deny it that in case of crisis, you are stranded on an island with no other food, grass can be a savior. Same way books read for knowledge are often read for fun. We are reading the stories of other people’s adventures.

I think we read for three broad reasons:

1. Fun
2. Practice
3. Knowledge 

Reading for Fun

Novels, short stories, biographies, and light business books come to mind. We pick up a title purely because it brings fun in one form or another. This category where I place newspapers, and most of the fiction. The idea is pure fun not even a glimpse of knowledge or practice.

Reading for Practice

This reading is for application. So there is a different sense to reading these books; we pay attention, we repeat discuss and remember.

Reading for Knowledge

Most of the business books fall into this category; filled with ideas, templates, models, spreadsheets, reports and strategies.

Knowledge without application: Mental Gas

Now the question is application of this reading effort. Fun is easier to understand: book was like ice cream, consumed- done. Practice: is straightforward. You read, apply it, and correct it, incorporate into your practice. But reading for the sake of knowledge without any plans for its application are like mental gas. It cause mental diarrhea and hence you see philosophizing at the bars.

I am curious to find out a way to apply that knowledge so that it becomes a part of my instinctual being. And I manifest it through my actions and not just through my words.